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A STATEMENT FROM HAMMOCK & SULLIVAN

Today in the on-going contests for the nominations in both our nation’s dominant political parties, there is much talk about the criminal justice legislation that was enacted by the Congress and signed into law by then President, William J. Clinton. As the result of that legislation New York State learned from the Clinton Administration that federal criminal justice monies would not flow to the State unless the State agreed to assure that violent offenders sentenced to prison terms would have to serve eighty-five per cent of their sentences and that they would not be eligible for “early release” through Parole Board action.

Determinate sentences arrived in NY in the form of the Sentencing Reform Act of 1995. As the result of “Jenna’s Law” in 1998, NY embraced the determinate sentence more fully and applied it to all violent felonies and drug offenses as well. To the extent that these offenders were no longer eligible for release by the Parole Board, parole release was abolished in the State.

The advent of determinate sentencing in NY has seen our Legislature energetically at work defining new crimes and providing ever rising penalties upon conviction for those new crimes. Although we have decreased the possible time for misdemeanor probation, our Legislature has found a basis for probation periods to run well beyond the five years that was the limit for many years for felony probation.

The Law Firm of Hammock and Sullivan, PC has been witness to all the changes that have been made in our sentencing laws. We have made it our business to keep current with sentencing and other relevant changes in our criminal laws so as to assure our ability to properly advise our clients and their lawyers regarding what they may be confronting based on a guilty plea or a guilty finding after trial. We have demonstrated our ability to provide meaningful assistance to our clients in obtaining permission to participate in and get the benefit of the available early release programs still available to inmates. That is our forte; that is the essence of our expertise.